Becoming Truth

I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond
or of very clear crystal in which there are many rooms.

- Teresa de Avila, Castillo Interior

How does one capture rhythms of the written word? What is the elusive imagery recurrent in literary works? What pervasive leitmotifs abound? My mind tires wrestling with the dissertion topic that has loomed large in front of me. For the past Almost-A-Year. 

I've been on a mountain-top resort accessible only by driving on treacherously curvy slopes of dirt roads. The house on the Street of a Thousand Flowers has been my sanctuary for afternoons of writing in semi-seclusion. I literally take a breather in the scent of Benguet pines breaking through the windows, after which I focus on the intimacies of my interior space. A more interesting preoccupation, it seems, at the moment. 

The writing area is just outside the curtained wall of the bedroom. Behind it to the right is a Corridor of Doors each of which opens up into a labyrinth of hidden rooms and secret niches - large and small. In some concealed corner, a wood carving of a wooden icon stands guard. Crossed spears arch over a passageway. A gentle push on the paneled wall to the right of the framed kalinga dancers reveals a stairway into the maids' quarters.

I pass through successive chambers, climbing short flights of steps through a network of alcoves - each a promise of architectural ingenuity and mystery.

Ultimately I enter the Place Most Holy, an inner sanctuary of indigenous Ifugao ethnic art.

This hideaway is a storehouse of strung jewelry beads, antique ceramic plates, and wood carvings of animal figures and anitos. I survey a row of tribal deities, awed by the immutable power of their impassive face.

In this Room Most Revered, I find refuge. It is as if a veil has uncovered the True Form where the Presence of Beauty dwells.

It is my Araby.

My Interior Castle through which my soul passes to achieve union with Truth.

Perfection.